Boeing-University Relations - A Review and Prospects for the Future

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The Boeing-A.D.Welliver Summer Faculty Fellowship ProgramThe Boeing - A. D.Welliver Faculty Summer Fellowship Program (WFSH) was created in 1994-95 to provide faculty with a better understanding of the practice of engineering, informationtechnology and business in industry. The Program is named in honor of the late A. D. “Bert”Welliver 8 , a former Boeing Corporate Senior Vice President of Engineering & Technology, whowas recognized throughout the aerospace industry for his vision and leadership in promoting aclose working relationship between industry and academia as well as between engineering andmanufacturing.The Program has two primary objectives:• To provide faculty from a broad range of schools with a better understanding of thepractice of engineering in industry, and of the business realities of that practice.• To influence the content of undergraduate education programs in ways that will betterprepare tomorrow’s graduates for the practice of engineering in a global industrialenvironment.Throughout its history 9 , the primary emphasis has been on enhancing undergraduate programsand developing a better alignment of curricular content with industry needs. Little attention (toolittle in the opinion of some) has been paid to corresponding needs to enhance graduateprograms, nor to the potential for exploiting and developing longer-term research opportunitiesof mutual interest to Program participants, the schools they represent, and the company. Thislatter opportunity has become an increasingly significant tertiary objective of the program inrecent years.The approach taken has been to provide an 8-week exposure to the business realities of theindustrial workplace to a group (9-12 annually depending on business conditions) ofcompetitively-selected Faculty Fellows. The WFSF targets faculty members at the AssociateProfessor level or above (i.e. those with tenure). Those at the Assistant Professor level or beloware generally asked to reapply at a later date once tenure has been granted. Boeing paysparticipants a salary equivalent to average faculty compensation rates, a per diem, and travelexpenses incurred during the duration of the WFSF.Each Faculty Fellow is assigned a company “mentor” who works with them to tailor the WFSFto meet their individual needs and interests, and then shepherds them through the overallprogram. The first week of the program is held at a selected plant site and concentrates on givingthe group of Faculty Fellows a broad overall familiarity with Boeing through briefings, tours andinteractions with company personnel. During Weeks 2-6, Faculty Fellows are dispersedindividually to several plant locations across the U.S. and given “shadowing assignments” thatallow them to freely interact with several levels of technical and management employees (fromrecently-hired engineers through company executives). The final week of the program brings theFaculty Fellows together again at a second major plant site and culminates with wrap-upbriefings, tours, and the Fellows’ reports to Boeing managers. The first required report to Boeingis a collaborative report emphasizing potential process improvements within the company, basedon the Fellows’ observations during their six weeks of shadowing assignments. The secondProceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & ExpositionCopyright ASEE 2005, American Society for Engineering Education.
eport required is each Fellow’s individual plan for future efforts on his or her campus based onlessons learned during the entire Program.After ten years of operation, the Program has generally been considered a success in meeting its(limited) objectives. From its inception, it was hoped that programs similar in concept and intentto the WFSF would be emulated by other companies throughout the country as a significantmeans to encourage systemic change in engineering and related education programs of interest tous all. To date, however, the program remains unique to Boeing (notwithstanding the existenceof industry-university research focused efforts like the NSF GOALI program), and now, after adecade of successful execution, has generated 107 alumni from about sixty colleges anduniversities (including HBUC/MIs and institutions of higher education in Australia and India).Boeing Fellow on Campus ProgramIn creating the WFSF, it was also recognized that its reciprocal could be of considerable value,and thus the concept of a Boeing Fellow on Campus Program was developed in parallel. Manyengineers and potential managers avail themselves (often at company expense) of universitybasedcontinuing education opportunities as part of their career and professional development.Sending them back to school as “adjunct” or “visiting” faculty, rather than as mere students,seemed a much more effective use of their talents and expertise – i.e. the “teacher” can oftenlearn much more than the students in the education process and every one (students, faculty, andthe industry individual) can thus gain from the campus experience provided by the extendedresidence of engineers from industry.A further motivation for developing this program was the observation that there was (andremains) as much ignorance of the realities of academe on the part of our industry colleagues aswe perceived there to be on the part of faculty about industry. Thus, if sustained relations withacademe were to be established, a working knowledge of the constraints and demands on facultyseemed essential, and the best way to get it would to become resident “visiting instructor/students” for an extended (though limited) period of time – e.g. a minimum of an academicquarter or semester, depending on how a specific school was organized.With these notions in mind, a program was constructed which identified suitable candidates fromBoeing to be fielded to willing schools in programs considered important to the company. Whathad not been adequately appreciated, however, is the rather brutal nature of the “industry rewardsystem”. While very different from the university “reward system”, individuals who embark on“extracurricular activities” like our proposed Fellow on Campus Program too often find that “outof sight, out of mind” for a period of more than a couple of weeks could have significantlyadverse career consequences. Despite careful work with both the schools and the managementchains for the initial trial candidates for the program well before the actual assignment began in1996-97, the experience proved less than satisfactory for almost all involved. Thus, with theexception of a few more modest attempts to repeat the program at later times, it has not beencontinued. Work done with other companies on this type of project suggests that this situation iffar from unique to Boeing. The conclusion from this has been that the gap between academe andindustry – at the working level – is even wider than had been thought, and that much of theproblem lies on the industry side of the equation, rather than being due to academic recalcitrance.Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & ExpositionCopyright ASEE 2005, American Society for Engineering Education.
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Page 17 and 18: AppendixExcerpts from Survey Respon
Page 19: BIOGRAPHIESDr. John H. McMasters jo

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